


The Best Thing a Flower Can Do

by Jadelyn



Series: We Remake Ourselves [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abandonment, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Suicide Attempt, look dragon!jaskier just had a really rough childhood okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24282070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadelyn/pseuds/Jadelyn
Summary: Jaskier is used to being unwanted, not good enough to keep.  Whether as a dragon who can't fly, or as a bard who doesn't know when to shut up, he's so useless that about the only thing he's good for - aside from being a burden to everyone he loves - is falling off of mountains.He was pushed, the first time.The second time, he'll go willingly.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: We Remake Ourselves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793071
Comments: 412
Kudos: 2201
Collections: Angsty Angst Times, Geralt is Sorry, Identity Crisis, The Witcher Alternate Universes





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It started from a simple question on discord: what if Jaskier was so terrified of the cliffside path in episode 6 because he's a dragon who can't fly? 
> 
> And then I got my hands on it and cranked the angst up to 11, because of course I did.
> 
> Unending thanks to my peeps on MoFu for cheering me on and encouraging me to write this, and especially to d20owlbear, patron saint of em-dashes, and dwarrowkings for the most thorough beta imaginable. rip my email.

"We should turn back." 

The witcher's rough voice is always music to Jaskier's ears, but even more so than usual with those words. _Listen to him, listen to him, listen to him,_ he thinks at Borch and Yennefer. Borch because he’s nominally the leader of their little party, and Yennefer because Jaskier knows that no matter what Borch says, Geralt will go with Yennefer along that awful path if she insists upon pressing onward. 

And Jaskier knows, too, that if Geralt goes, he will follow. But then, he’s known that for years now.

They don't listen, of course. His luck is never that good. If it were, he wouldn't be here - Yennefer of fucking Vengerburg wouldn't have shown up in that tavern, and Geralt wouldn't have gotten that fucking besotted look - _honestly, Geralt, “stars in one’s eyes” is just supposed to be a poetic turn of phrase, not a literal description of one’s expression_ \- and agreed to go along purely because she was going.

He tries to get Yennefer to go first, but she rolls her eyes and shoves him in the general direction of the edge. His heart nearly stops at that, even though he's not particularly close to the cliff and logically he knows he's not in danger from her light push. 

The familiar shame takes up residence in his gut, though, the whispers coming back as they always do. _Whoever heard of a dragon afraid of heights?_ they taunt him, _Can you even call yourself a dragon, really?_

_No_ , Jaskier mentally snaps back. _Which is why I'm fucking_ here _, and not back home in the eyries where I was_ supposed to _belong._

They're all looking at him, and he realizes it's been longer than it should, with him lost in his little reverie instead of stepping out onto the path. He wants to look to Geralt, plead with him not to make them do this, but he knows he'll just get to see the man making eyes at Yennefer like a lovesick teenager and this day is bad enough already. So instead he blows out a sharp breath, steels himself, and inches out onto the planks, gripping onto the chain with all the not inconsiderable strength of his hands. 

It only gets worse, a minute later, when the board beneath his feet cracks and a little chunk tumbles away from the edge. His foot slips with it and for an awful instant he can't breathe, can't see, can't think. There's nothing, only the empty air below his foot _(beneath his wings, unable to hold him aloft),_ the howling wind that reminds him of the wind singing around the peaks of his home, and the terror of falling. 

"Oh," he groans, clinging even more desperately to the chain, trying to steady himself. "Whoa, oh fuck. That is. That is _not_ a good sign." It feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest, and his stomach churns even as he regains his balance and forces himself to continue.

* * *

When Julian was a hatchling, his parents still had hope. Sure, his right wing was smaller than the left, and a bit misshapen, and it wouldn't open fully, but as he grew perhaps it would grow with him, heal and get better. It just needed time, they told themselves, and each other, and Julian. If only Julian would work at it, stretch the shortened tendons, teach the muscles to form to the proper shape of a healthy, extended wing, it would get better, they insisted. But no matter how hard he tried, it never worked. His wing simply wouldn't open fully.

(His parents tried to _force_ it to full extension, again and again, holding him still and pulling, pulling, pulling until he was limp and whining, making the thin, high keening sound that is as close to tears as a dragon can get.)

(It never worked.)

(They never apologized for it.)

It only takes a few days for a hatchling to begin flying. At first, their wings are easily tired and they can only get a few feet off the ground, but the instinct to take to the skies drives them and they fly and fly and fly, slowly gaining more altitude, able to sustain flight for longer, until by the time they're a few years old they can fly nearly as high and as far as an adult.

Despite his malformed wing, Julian had the same instincts as any of his kind. At first, he tried to fly normally. When that failed, he figured out how to glide as best he could, just to feel the sensation of air beneath him the way he craved. He learned that if he climbed up to a particular protrusion near the ceiling of their eyrie and launched himself off, he could glide all the way to the other wall. It was something, at least. It was better than nothing. He wanted to fly, yes, and it made him sad, aching for something in his blood that would never be satisfied, but he could mostly shrug off the melancholy when it struck. Instead, he would crawl out onto the ledges to listen to the music of the wind dancing around the peaks, letting the wind-song soothe him.

But as he grew, gliding grew more difficult, and he began to notice the pained looks his parents gave him when he did it. That was when the melancholy began to sour into shame.

He stopped gliding. His claws never left the ground. But that only seemed to make it worse, when his parents watched him crawling about their eyrie or the peaks around their home. His father began trying to force him to fly by shoving him off of low ledges where the drop was terrifying but not fatal, in the hope that perhaps instinct could force his bad wing into service where mere willpower couldn't. It didn’t work; all it gained him was bruises and the occasional fractured limb.

And then there was another egg. His sister, who hatched tiny and perfect, with two completely normal wings. Julian couldn’t begrudge her that, even though it hurt to see his parents rejoicing in their normal child - almost giddy with joy that their daughter wasn’t _deformed_ , like him.

But apparently that was _all_ they cared to notice about her, for neither parent paid enough attention to see that little Myr didn’t eat at all for three days after hatching. It was Julian who noticed that a chunk of shell had adhered to Myr’s face, preventing her from opening her mouth enough to eat, and it was Julian who carefully pried it away and fed her her first meal.

He knew all too well what it was like to be unimportant. He wasn’t going to let her suffer that, not if he could help it.

When she started trying to fly, he ran along beside her, encouraging her and pretending not to see the way their parents watched them - pride for their daughter, resentment for him. Myr’s delight in flying was almost enough to ease the ache in Julian’s heart at being earthbound, the contact between their minds giving him a glimpse of what it felt like to fly.

In return, he shared his joy with her: when they could sneak away (their parents were of the opinion that because he couldn’t fly, it wasn’t safe to have Myr out on the ledges with him, since he wouldn’t be able to catch her if she fell. Julian very carefully did not think about what that implied, given they’d never cared when he went out alone), he brought her out onto the mountain to listen to the wind-song. When they couldn’t, he curled himself around her in a corner of their eyrie and sang to her instead, mimicking the natural music as best he could.

Julian hated his parents, but he loved his little sister, and her presence made life in the eyrie mostly tolerable. Their contempt for him never lessened, but he thought they had reached a sort of uncomfortable equilibrium and perhaps that was as good as it was going to get.

And then there came the day when his father carried Julian upon his back to the steepest side of the mountain peak, told him he was welcome home as soon as he could fly back up to the eyrie, and pushed him off the mountain.


	2. Chapter 2

It's like something from a nightmare, when the planks give way and Borch and the Zerrikanians fall, arrested only by their grip on the chain. Geralt grabs the chain, holds the weight of the three of them suspended and keeps the chain from breaking away entirely by main force. But it's too much even for him, especially when he's only braced against more of the same old, brittle boards that had failed Borch and the others.

Jaskier shouts his friend's name without thinking, turning around and trying to move back toward him as though to help somehow. Yennefer does, too, leaning toward Geralt and reaching for him just as the board under his feet cracks in warning, and for the briefest moment Jaskier and Yennefer are united in purpose. He'll forgive every barbed comment, every second of time she's stolen from him and Geralt, every foul mood of Geralt's he's ever had to put up with after she leaves again, if only she can reach their Witcher and draw him back, keep him from falling too.

Because even as tears sting his eyes, even as his heart crashes against his throat, even as he fights to keep his stomach down, Jaskier knows: if Geralt falls, Jaskier will too. Crippled wing or no, he will throw _himself_ off a mountain this time and do everything he can to use his worthless, fucked-up wings to try to save his friend.

But Borch lets go, and Tea and Vea follow him down, disappearing into the mists. Jaskier gags at the sight, chokes on it, manages to hold back. Gods, he remembers it, remembers the helplessness, nothing but empty air rushing past, the rocky maw of the ravine below waiting to claim him…

"Go," Yennefer snaps, jerking him out of his memories. "We need to get off this fucking path before anything else breaks and gets the rest of us killed, too."

She's right, but it still takes painfully long seconds before Jaskier manages to force his terror-stiffened muscles to move again.

The howling wind mocks him the rest of the way along the narrow path.

* * *

Julian survived the fall.

He wished he hadn't.

He eked out a kind of spare existence, once his wounds from the fall healed. He learned the forests, and how to hunt without the ability to stoop out of the sky and snatch up his prey like a proper dragon - like Myr would, one day.

But Julian learned that the forest held more dangers than simple starvation and loneliness when a party of humans came searching for him, and he heard them talk of the rumors they'd heard that led them there. Apparently he was valuable prey, to the right kind of hunter. _Ironic. I could have more value in death than I ever could in life,_ he thought.

With the charred corpses of the hunters strewn about the still-smoldering grass of the clearing, Julian took on a human form for the first time.

The deformity of his wing didn't affect this form, he learned. His right arm was normal, and he dropped to his knees among the bodies and wept, harsh sobs wracking his new body. The only way he could be normal, it seemed, was to give up his true form entirely.

When the storm of his tears passed, acceptance settled in, dull and aching beneath his ribs. He'd been a terrible dragon, anyway. Perhaps he'd make a better human.

He took a new name, after the yellow flowers he'd liked in his meadow in the hills below the eyries. Julian was dead. Jaskier left him behind and didn't look back.

He learned to make music, learned to sing, but he could never really capture the wild beauty of the wind-song he remembered, and mostly it just reminded him of the way his parents used to look at him when they caught him gliding or running along with Myr. Eventually he stopped trying and wrote shitty songs about half-imagined creatures instead. Flights of fancy, it seemed, were the only kind he was to be allowed.

And then one day in a small tavern in a beautiful valley, he met another outcast. Different than those around him, unwanted and unwelcome because of it (also, Jaskier couldn’t help but notice, unfairly gorgeous). The man clearly wanted to be left alone, but despite his brusque response still treated Jaskier better than the actual humans around them had. He wasn’t kind or polite, but he spoke to Jaskier as though he took him seriously, and even left the last coin from his purse for the bard who'd intruded on his silence and pestered him.

It was a small kindness, but it was enough to kindle a sweet warmth in his chest unlike anything he’d felt before. After that, how could Jaskier do anything _but_ follow him?

Sure, the witcher didn't actually want Jaskier around, but he was used to that. He wasn't going to let it stop him.

So for two decades Jaskier let his life shape into a sort of casual orbit around Geralt, intersecting and paralleling by turns, sometimes together, sometimes apart, but always finding one another again as though drawn together by something as inescapable as gravity.

Until one day, on a mountain not unlike the one his father had pushed him from all those years ago, when it all shattered apart.


	3. Chapter 3

After more than twenty years, Jaskier recognizes well enough when Geralt is self-flagellating over something. Gods know it happens often enough to give him plenty of practice. He sets out his bedroll nearby, keeping half an eye on Geralt brooding into the sunset and waiting for the moment when anger shifts into guilt, when Jaskier can approach without provoking Geralt into lashing out.

Geralt tilts his head minutely as Jaskier approaches, but doesn't pull away. A tender satisfaction blooms in Jaskier’s chest at the way Geralt trusts him enough to let Jaskier intrude on his silence in this moment.

"You did your best," Jaskier says gently. It won't get through to him yet, but when Geralt is like this there's no fast way to break through. It's more like water trying to wear away stone, and each word is another drop that carries away a tiny bit more of the self-loathing. "There's nothing else you could've done."

Geralt doesn’t respond. The wind sings around them, reminding Jaskier with a pang of the way he used to share that with Myr, reminding him of the only things of home he's ever really missed. He thinks of home, and he thinks of falling, and the way he knew in an instant that he would willingly brave his worst fear and near-certain death to try to save Geralt, if he had fallen. If he was willing to do that, shouldn't Jaskier be willing to try slightly less extreme measures to tell the witcher how much he loves him?

So he takes a deep breath and offers, asks.

"Composing your next song?" Geralt asks archly, when Jaskier lets himself babble a bit too much into the silence, but there's no real malice in it.

"No," Jaskier says quietly. "Just… just trying to work out what pleases me." _It's you,_ he thinks, aching with twenty-two years of love welling up in him, threatening to flood out of his control. _It's always been you, my love, and it always will be._

Geralt spends the night in Yennefer's tent.

Jaskier finds himself unsurprised by it, and realizes that he knew Geralt would, and that it doesn't matter. Jaskier will still be here in the morning, like he was yesterday and the day before. He’ll follow Geralt wherever he goes, as long as he’s permitted to do so. He realizes, even as silent tears slide down his face in the dark, that he would prefer a thousand nights of crying himself to sleep with Geralt nearby, even if it's in Yennefer's arms, than to leave and never see him again.

* * *

_Jaskier dreams of falling, that night. Again and again, he watches the boards give way and watches Geralt fall. Again and again, he flings himself from the path after him, reclaiming a form he never thought to take again, because he may not be able to fly but perhaps he can glide a tiny bit, enough to break Geralt's fall, enough that maybe it won't kill him._

_Again and again, he fails._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, I am SOBBING. This story is my first foray into writing fic in, coincidentally, twenty-two years. I was so nervous to post this last night that I had to ask a friend to bribe and/or bully me into doing it. So to get such lovely responses, when I absolutely was not expecting it, I don't have words for what that's doing to me. Thank you all so very much.
> 
> The whole thing is written already, so updates should be pretty steady as I finish editing each chapter. And I promise, everyone lives.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold onto your butts, people. Shit's about to get real(er).

"If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take _you_ off my hands!"

Jaskier stumbles away on unsteady legs, reeling from the fury in Geralt’s voice. He hadn't expected Geralt to love him back — he’d hoped, of course, dreamt it perhaps, but not expected it — but he'd thought at least the witcher didn't _hate_ him. He’d thought, despite Geralt’s bluster about it, that they were friends.

Apparently he'd been wrong about that. 

Which makes him wonder: did he ever really know Geralt at all? What else had he misjudged?

The dwarves have already broken camp. Jaskier stares around the empty campsite for a long moment, loneliness threatening to overwhelm him. Tears, hot and bitter against skin that feels frozen as ice, blur his vision. He should… he should get his bedroll at least, right? Some food, maybe. One of the waterskins.

He finds his lute in his hands without thinking about it and slings it across his back, leaves everything else, and walks away. 

There's only one path to the top. Which means there's only one path down.

Jaskier doesn’t follow it. He retraces their steps instead, numbness warring with an odd sense of relief. He’s alone, really and truly alone now, which means he doesn’t have to put on a performance for anyone. He doesn’t have to hide his broken heart. He doesn’t have to pretend to be okay. He can just… be. Whatever that means for him now.

The wind-song should be comforting, but instead it's just a reminder of his many, many failures. Jaskier places his lute carefully against the rocks at the start of the wooden ledge and begins to walk the precarious path again, back the way they'd come. 

He walks the path with ease this time, head high and feet sure on the boards. He looks over the edge and laughs, high and wild. Who knew the cure for fear was heartbreak?

The crossing is much faster this time, unburdened by the terror of the day before. He reaches the place where Borch had fallen and crouches down, inching closer to the edge. The broken chain dangles, clinking, a gentle percussion to accompany the howling wind.

Jaskier turns and stands with his back against the wall, gazing out over the valley below him. There’s no audience, but he’ll give one last performance anyway.

"I was worthless as a dragon, and it seems no better as a person," he says to the wind. It keens back at him. He feels light, as though the wind could sweep him up and bear him away. "Twenty-two years and I'm still not good enough even to be his friend. I'm just an unwanted burden, same as I've always been." It occurs to him that the most value anyone has put on his existence — anyone save Myr — was when those hunters wanted to kill him and butcher his corpse to sell the parts. He laughs bitterly, but the wind snatches the sound from his lips.

"Twenty-two years is nothing to a dragon's lifespan. I’ve been human longer than Geralt has been alive," Jaskier muses. He’s trying to be reasonable. It doesn't make him feel any better; it just makes it worse. 

"I'm so tired," he tells the view. The trees below wave to him, beckoning. "So tired of never being enough. I can't do this any longer. I just can't. It’s too much." He leans out over the edge, the chain in one hand all that tethers him.

The valley below him blurs, tears blinding him, stinging his eyes. "The only thing I've ever been any good at is falling," he says, bile rising in his throat at the admission. At least this time, it’s his choice. "Play to your strengths, right?"

He lets go.

He only realizes he’s shifted into his draconic form when he feels the wind dragging at his wings. It catches on the mismatched limbs and sends him tumbling into a spin, trees and stone blurring around him. He flings both his wings out, stretching his deformed wing as far as he can, letting wind and weight and gravity collide as they will. It won’t make a difference in his overall speed; the impact will still be enough. There’s no miracle here to save him, and he’s grateful for it.

He spirals down. There's air rushing past him just like he remembers, the rocks waiting there below. It's peaceful, in a way. Familiar. It feels right.

With a final roar that's meant to be defiant, but instead comes out as a howl of grief, Jaskier lets the ground claim him. 

_Bye, Geralt. I'm sorry._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: gets into Geralt's head to write a chapter from his POV  
> Me: looks around  
> Me: ...  
> Me: damn, bitch, you live like this?
> 
> AKA, why should Jaskier get all the angst? In this house, there's angst enough for _everyone._

Borch returns to the cavern, to his… his _progeny_. Geralt says nothing, because he knows if he says anything more he'll wind up picking another fight, and witchers are no more immune to dragonfire than anyone else. He stands alone and stares out over the valley, the peaceful view in sharp contrast to the turmoil within.

His life would be so much easier if the rumors about witchers and feelings were true. Maybe _that's_ what he should've asked the djinn for, he thinks. He chokes back a near-hysterical laugh. If only he could be the emotionless killing machine everyone expects him to be, and nothing more. It would be simpler that way.

Because, fuck, look where emotion's gotten him. Standing alone on a mountain, haunted by the tears streaking Yen's face and the broken sound of Jaskier’s farewell. Knowing himself to be the author of this destruction.

They both deserved better.

He doesn't know how long he's been standing there, when the roar snaps him out of his fugue. He whirls, trying to pinpoint the sound. By the time the echoes start to fade, he's already moving toward it.

Because Jaskier is somewhere on that mountain, alone. And there's a wyvern, or a griffon, or another fucking dragon or something making that desperate sound. His bard stands no chance of defending himself against anything like that. Hell, even if the sound came from nothing more than a particularly vocal mountain lion, it would still be more than Jaskier can handle on his own. Sure, Geralt is annoyed with Jaskier, but that doesn’t mean he wants the man to come to harm. Especially when the only reason he’s even _in_ danger is because Geralt sent him away.

So he'll track Jaskier, find him, and protect him, same as he's always done.

_What is this? The witcher, playing the white knight?_ some part of his mind asks mockingly. _Will you ride in on your valiant steed — who isn’t even here, currently tethered miles away — and come to his rescue like one of those stupid ballads he sings? Leap between him and the dragon and send the foul beast fleeing? Sweep him up into your arms, cover his artfully torn clothing with your cloak, kiss away his tears and ride off into the sunset in a suitably dramatic tableau?_

_Have you let yourself believe you’re actually the noble hero he makes you out to be in his songs?_

_Haven’t you learned by now that the world doesn’t need you?_

Geralt shakes his head, shoving the thoughts away as best he can. None of that matters. All that matters is making sure Jaskier hasn't gotten himself killed by something that never would've gotten near him if Geralt hadn't sent him off alone.

When he reaches their campsite, Geralt sighs. Jaskier’s lute is missing, but his pack and bedroll are still there. Of course the man wouldn't bother with practicalities. That's just like him, to wander off with only his lute. Not even a fucking waterskin. The idiot.

"Dammit, Jaskier," he mutters, then flinches as it echoes in his mind and tangles with the memory of those same words in a snarl of pain and fury.

Unless Jaskier hasn’t left for good, only stomped off in a huff to sulk alone for a bit. Perhaps he’s planning to come back? It’s hardly the first time Geralt has snapped at him. Jaskier probably understands that Geralt didn’t really mean it and once they’ve both had some time to cool off, the bard will come back and they’ll continue on as they always do.

Unfortunately, Geralt can’t _wait_ to see if Jaskier returns of his own accord, not if there’s some beast nearby. Sulking alone could all too easily turn into being solitary prey for whatever is hunting out there.

It should be easy enough to track him, though. They've traveled together enough that Jaskier's tracks are as familiar to him as his own, and he could catch and trace Jaskier's scent in the middle of Oxenfurt on a feast day if he had to. It's no challenge at all to follow him now.

Only… if he's right, and Geralt knows he is — this is what he _does_ , for fuck's sake — then something is very, very wrong.

Because the tracks don't follow the trail down-mountain, as they should.

They split off and go back by the way they came. Back to the "shortcut" that had nearly gotten them killed.

Geralt stands for a long minute, staring at the spot where the tracks diverge, thinking. Jaskier had been utterly terrified of that path — panic has a particularly sharp scent, and Jaskier had reeked of it the whole way across. Why would he go back that way?

Maybe he was just wandering, not paying attention, and automatically retraced his steps from the prior day. Gods know Jaskier can be entirely oblivious to his surroundings while he walks, Geralt thinks, a fond smile tugging at the edges of his lips for a moment before he remembers where he is and what he's doing.

All right. It doesn't make any sense for him to go back that way, but Geralt trusts his senses and his tracking ability, and if they tell him Jaskier went this way, then he'll follow. Hopefully he'll run across Jaskier backtracking from the shortcut ledge, having realized his mistake.

But he reaches the path with no sight of the bard, and to his utter bafflement the scent-trail continues out onto the ledge, as do the tracks displacing the ancient dust on the boards.

What the fuck is going on here?

And then he sees Jaskier's lute, leaning against a nearby boulder.

His stomach drops, and it feels as though there is a band of steel around his ribs keeping him from drawing a full breath.

Because the one constant in Jaskier’s behavior is the way his lute is always, _always_ within arm’s reach, no matter what. He takes better care of that thing than he does himself, and Geralt's always had the distinct impression that Jaskier would sooner die than be parted from it for good.

Yet here it is, placed out of the way and abandoned. Not just dropped. Placed, leaning against a rock as though Jaskier had meant to pick it back up in a moment. Which means he set it down, willingly, before walking out onto a narrow path over a steep drop that had scared the shit out of him only a day earlier.

Geralt swallows against the building sense of foreboding churning through him. With an effort, he calls to mind one of Vesemir’s old sayings: _brick by brick is how the road is laid. Step by step is how you follow it. Focus your eyes too far ahead and you’ll trip over what’s right in front of you._

It helps center his mind, allowing him to break down what he needs to do. _Follow the trail._ He accompanies each task he assigns himself with a slow, deliberate breath in and out, helping to further ground him in the present and pushing away distractions. _Just track him. Stop speculating. You don't know what happened. Find him first, then worry about the rest._

Shouldering Jaskier's lute alongside his swords, he steps out onto the ledge and continues along the path his friend left behind him. Despite the veneer of calm his thoughts had brought him only a moment before, he moves at a speed that’s close to recklessness even for him, driven on by the rising dread beneath the order he’s tried to impose on his chaotic mind.

Jaskier’s trail ends abruptly, exactly where he’d feared it would. Geralt looks across at the other side of the gap left by the broken section with eyes narrowed, gauging the distance, then shakes his head. Even he would be hard-pressed to make that leap. Jaskier certainly couldn’t have.

So.

Jaskier didn’t continue onward.

There were no tracks leading back to the far end of the path.

And he’s not here.

Geralt sinks into a crouch, hand hovering just above the last tracks on the path, forcing himself to take deep, even breaths and pushing back the panic that wants to claw its way out of his chest. Because the last few tracks here are clear as anything. There are some scuff marks as though Jaskier had shuffled his feet a bit, turning around perhaps? And then…

Two clear, solid prints, faced squarely out over the drop.

A faint smudge backward from the toes of those prints, the way someone’s feet might slip and move in the last second before…

_No._ Geralt shakes his head, as though trying to dislodge the idea that’s settling in. _Jaskier can’t. He wouldn’t._

_But he left his lute behind,_ the thought rises unbidden from the back of his mind. _Which is the sort of thing people do, when they’re preparing to–_

“No!” he snarls aloud, fury and fear and pain colliding in his throat to leave his voice even rougher than usual, nearly bestial.

Leaning out over the drop, he casts his gaze downward, terrified of what he might see but needing to know. But the mists have come back and obscured everything, exactly like they had the day before. At that thought, his mind helpfully calls up the memory of Borch falling and disappearing into the mist and superimposes Jaskier over it. He growls wordlessly and shoves the mental image away. He lacks the climbing equipment to go straight down to investigate, so he’ll have to find another route to the base of this cliff.

Because there’s no question about it; he has to check, has to see for himself if his fear is true. And if it is — if his own harsh words, his damnable lack of self-control and the way he lashed out like that drove Jaskier to throw himself off a fucking mountain to his death…

Geralt shoves himself to his feet abruptly and quickly enough that he has to catch himself on the chain for balance before turning and all but fleeing back the way he’d come. He can’t let himself think about that now. Can’t, or he’ll break apart where he stands and be no use to anyone at all.

Brutally suppressing all hints of thought or emotion, he goes to find another route to the bottom of the cliff.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaskier wakes to agony searing through the entire left side of his body and an all-too-familiar voice snarling threats at him. _Fuck,_ he thinks blearily without opening his eyes, _I should’ve known the afterlife would involve Geralt yelling at me. Talk about eternal punishment. S’pose I deserve it, though._

But there’s something...off about it, he realizes after a moment. The tone is wrong. Harsher, with more venom even than that awful moment atop the mountain, and laced through with an undercurrent of something Jaskier’s never heard in that voice before.

Is that...fear? What the fuck could possibly make the great witcher, Geralt of Rivia, sound _afraid_ like that?

Confusion (and a traitorous thread of concern, which Jaskier does his best to ignore) drags him a little further toward full wakefulness, and he finally listens to the actual words Geralt is all but spitting at him, not just the tone.

“Wake up, you oversized fucking lizard. I can hear your fucking heartbeat, I know you’re not dead, so wake up and talk to me. I have questions, and I _will_ get the answers to those questions from you one way or another. So wake the fuck up already, dammit.”

In twenty-two years, Jaskier’s not sure he’s ever heard Geralt string that many words together that quickly, all at once like that. Definitely not in a tone that manages to be both furious and frantic at once. Something is deeply, unnervingly wrong here.

Well, in point of fact, there are _several_ things deeply, unnervingly wrong, and first and foremost among them is the fact that he seems to be _alive_. Even for a dragon, falling that far out of the sky should’ve killed him, and it’s a sick, cruel joke Destiny has decided to play on him by making him survive that fall.

Suddenly he understands why Geralt hates Destiny so much. It’s because she’s a sadistic bitch. And now that he’s experiencing it for himself Jaskier hates her, too.

The second deeply, unnervingly wrong thing is the sheer amount of pain he’s in. Jaskier’s never been a fan of pain, either as a dragon or as a man, and now he’s all but drowning in it. Each breath sends fire shooting down his side. His left leg and wing both throb mercilessly. He makes the mistake of trying to shift a tiny bit, thinking perhaps if he can ease his wing out from its crumpled position beneath his body it might make it less awful, only to send fresh agony erupting and coursing through him. He keens helplessly at it, the same thin whimpering cry he remembers from when he was a hatchling and his parents thought they could force his wing open.

Unfortunately, the movement and sound alert Geralt that he’s conscious. Jaskier hears the witcher step closer, and suddenly something sharp prods at the soft spot in his scales just below the hinge of his jaw.

“I know you’re awake.” Geralt’s voice has dropped into a low rumble that is genuinely terrifying, especially when it’s that close, especially while he’s got a sword or dagger or whatever very pointy thing it is he’s got against Jaskier’s throat. “So let’s have a little chat, hm?”

No point pretending, then. Jaskier opens his eyes — and flinches, then whines as the movement sends further pain sizzling along his nerves.

But gods, Geralt is _right there_ , fury rolling off of him in almost palpable waves, and the expression on his face is manic, verging on outright unhinged. He’s covered in rock dust, hair disheveled, and his eyes are burning like the sun. All told, he gives the distinct impression of a man half a hair’s breadth from snapping and killing whoever’s nearest to hand.

Though actually, now that Jaskier thinks about it, that might not be such a bad idea. Because he’s a poet, even to the end, he lets himself dwell for a moment on the dramatic irony that is his incompetence causing him to fuck up his own goddamn suicide attempt and needing Geralt to come finish the job for him. _You told me I was a burden and you wanted me out of your life, but I couldn’t even do that right and need you to do it for me._ If he had his lute — which, he suddenly notices, is slung across Geralt's back…why? — he could make it into a truly absurd, mocking, farcical ballad.

He can’t dwell long, though, because the whole thing goes sideways when Geralt leans closer and asks:

"What did you do with him?"

Jaskier blinks. _Him? Him who?_ Apparently this isn't even _about_ Jaskier wasting two decades of his life trying to be a friend to someone who hates him and flinging himself off a fucking mountain trying to die after that someone made his feelings on the matter crystal clear (and somehow surviving anyway). How lovely, to know his demise is so far beneath Geralt’s notice as to be irrelevant to the conversation. No, it's about…someone else. Someone that Geralt thinks Jaskier…did something…with?

Geralt's patience seems to be fraying fast, though, because even as Jaskier puzzles his way through this the witcher is putting more pressure on the blade. And it's not as though Jaskier is exactly concerned for his own safety at the moment but he's confused, and frightened, and has overall had a truly shit day so far. He’s fine with Geralt finishing him off, but he'd really rather just get it the fuck over with already instead of Geralt standing there threatening him like this first, please. So instead of even attempting to reply — not that he’s sure he can, since he’s never tried to talk to a human while in this form before — Jaskier finds himself just whimpering again.

"You took him. I know you did. His fucking scent is all over you. _What did you do with him?"_ Geralt's voice sounds raw and painful, and damn Jaskier's lovestruck heart but it makes him _worry_ about the man, makes him genuinely _want_ to help, if only he knew what the fuck Geralt was on about.

Which is stupid and pathetic, but that doesn't make it any less true. So Jaskier, going purely on instinct, focuses his thoughts, starts to reach for Geralt with his mind — and stops, shocked into silence at the witcher's next words.

"You will tell me what I need to know, or so help me I will carve you into fucking bite-sized pieces one chunk at a time." Jaskier has never, in all their years together, heard Geralt sound like that. The snarl is downright feral, the gruesome threat wholly sincere, and for the first time Jaskier thinks Geralt actually _sounds_ like the monster people expect him to be. "I will give you one last chance to answer me. What. Did you do. With my bard?"

_Wait. What?_

_Sweet Melitele's left nipple,_ Jaskier thinks despairingly. For someone whose survival often rests on his ability to interpret a situation and draw the correct conclusions, Geralt can apparently be a fucking idiot sometimes, if the conclusion is one he doesn’t want to consider.

The man had obviously tracked Jaskier to the ledge path, found his lute where he'd left it, come down to the spot right below where the trail ends, found a dragon injured from a fall despite there being no reports of an additional dragon anywhere near this mountain, a dragon which apparently still smells like Jaskier does in his human form, and he still can't put it together? Fuck, Jaskier had even happened to be wearing clothes in almost the same color as his scales! How is it possible for Geralt to look at all that and still think it more likely that a random, unrelated dragon had snatched Jaskier off the mountainside and then mysteriously wound up on the ground directly below that with no human in sight?

But he can't think of how to even begin to string all of that into words, and while he had been perfectly fine with Geralt finishing him off Jaskier would really rather strongly prefer to have done with it quickly, not via the kind of slow, painful dismemberment that Geralt has just threatened him with, so…

_This is a terrible idea,_ he tells himself.

_Yeah, it is,_ he acknowledges. _But I'm gonna do it anyway._

So before Geralt can do anything else to him (and before his common sense can override his impulsive decision-making), Jaskier closes his eyes, drags the pain-filled shards of his concentration back together for a moment, and forces himself to shift back to his human form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yen took the brain cell with her when she left, apparently. Clearly neither of these two idiots has it at the moment.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The secret is out! Time to see if they can figure out how to Use Their Words and try out this whole communication thing.

The pain, rather surprisingly, doesn't get any worse. Although it doesn't get any better, either. Damn.

There's a ringing clatter on the stones beside him, and Jaskier's eyes fly open to see Geralt's sword lying there. Not once, in the dozens or even hundreds of fights he’s borne witness to, has Jaskier seen Geralt just _drop_ his sword except on purpose. Have it knocked from his grip, sometimes, sure, but not just dropped. _What the…_

"No." It's more exhalation than speech, sounding like the word was punched out of him. "No, that's not –" Geralt's voice breaks, and he coughs before continuing. "It's not possible. This is not the sort of thing that happens _twice in one fucking day._ Especially not after I've spent the last two decades around you, thinking you were human the whole fucking time!"

The edge in his voice could be either anger or hysteria, and Jaskier can't tell which it is without seeing Geralt's face. He tries to crane his neck back to look up at the witcher's face, but it makes the shards of bone in his left shoulder grate against each other, immediately halting the movement. He winds up trying to bite back a scream as he freezes, eyes screwed shut, desperately willing the agony to subside to its previous level.

There's a crunch of gravel underfoot as Geralt kneels beside him, and then a hand, comfortingly familiar, touches his good shoulder. "You shouldn’t try to move yet," Geralt warns him, oddly gentle after the harshness of a moment before. "Now, be still for me, Jaskier. I need to check your spine for fractures before I can see to the rest of your injuries."

"No," Jaskier whispers, but he can't move away or stop the hands that carefully trace down his neck and along the bumps of his spine. "Don't. Geralt, stop. Just…" and now tears are trickling from beneath his closed eyelids, tears of shame and hurt and self-loathing, "just go. Leave me here. Please." There's an odd, choked noise from above him, like nothing he's ever heard from Geralt before, but Jaskier ignores it. "Or, or if you really want to help, if I can prevail upon you to clean up my mess one last time, help me finish it.”

“No.”

“Make it quick, before you go. That's all I want. Please –"

 _"No!"_ It comes out as an anguished shout, cutting off Jaskier's pitiful pleas.

The silence echoes around them, until Jaskier starts at the touch of Geralt's hand brushing his hair back, stifling a whimper of pain produced by the involuntary movement as the witcher leans down and presses his brow to Jaskier's temple. Geralt's lips brush his cheek when he speaks again.

"How can you ask me that?" he whispers. "How can you think I would ever…" Geralt swallows hard. "I've spent the better part of a quarter-century trying to protect you, always fearing that something might go wrong and I might not be able to keep you safe – and now you ask me to be the one to _kill_ you? Do you really think I would – do you think I even _could?"_

"Not even as an act of mercy, rather than leaving me to a slow death?"

"You're _not_ dying today," Geralt snarls, hand tightening on the back of his neck just a tiny bit — not enough to hurt, but enough to hold. "No matter how badly you want to," he adds bitterly as he sits back up, hands returning to Jaskier's back to assess for spinal damage.

“Bastard,” Jaskier mutters. After what Geralt said, after how cruelly and deliberately he broke Jaskier’s heart, how dare he come and witness Jaskier’s shame and helplessness? How dare he refuse Jaskier the right to make this choice? How dare he suddenly get all noble and try to take care of him like this?

How dare he pretend to care, and give Jaskier false hope for something he can never have?

“Hm.”

Jaskier recognizes that tone, that’s an agreement ‘hm’. It twists something in his heart to hear it and know that for once he’s contributing to Geralt’s usual self-hatred instead of helping relieve him of that burden as best he can. But he keeps his mouth shut, knowing that if he says anything now it’s going to start That Conversation, and he’s not in the slightest way ready for it at present.

“No fractures to your spine,” Geralt murmurs a moment later. “You were lucky.”

“Not sure _that’s_ the word I’d use.” Damn his mouth, why must things just spill out like that?

“Stop that,” Geralt snaps.

“What?” Jaskier shoots back. “A little too much honesty for you, witcher? Hate to be the one to break it to you, but we don’t all have your stupendous capacity for masking our true feelings for twenty-fucking-two years before suddenly letting them explode at people. Some of us just, you know, express our emotions.”

“Is that what you call _this?”_ Jaskier doesn’t have to see the way Geralt gestures over his broken body, he can hear it in the man’s voice. “‘Expressing your emotions?’ Truly, you have a bard’s capacity for euphemism.”

“Wow, he’s even breaking out the multisyllabic words. Who knew all I had to do to get a pseudo-intelligent conversation out of you was throw myself off a fucking mountain? I’d have done it years ago, had I realized.”

The sound Geralt makes, a moment later… from anyone else, anyone at all, Jaskier would’ve called it a sob. Silence stretches between them long enough that Jaskier starts counting his breaths, in and out, just for something to do so he doesn’t say anything else to fill the quiet and make it worse.

“Jaskier… don’t.” Oh, there’s _another_ tone he’s never heard in Geralt’s voice before, hesitant and almost pleading, and isn’t he just learning so many _new_ and _exciting_ things about Geralt’s emotional range today? “Please, stop. Don’t do this. It’s… I know what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to push me away and get me to leave you here. And I can promise you it’s not going to work, no matter what you say — though I’d appreciate it,” he adds with a grim sort of humor, “if you didn’t take that as a challenge — so, please. I’m asking you. Stop making this harder than it needs to be right now, for both of us.”

_Fuck._

_How is it,_ Jaskier wonders idly, _that I’m the one laying here half-broken apart and wishing I were dead, and yet somehow_ I _still manage to feel bad for_ Geralt? _That is… just not how this is supposed to go, at all._

 _And yet, here we are,_ he thinks, and the echo of memory that phrase invokes startles a harsh, bitter laugh from him.

But it turns out laughing with broken ribs is a terrible idea, sending agony lancing through his chest, which his involuntary gasp of pain only makes worse. For a terrifying moment he struggles even to breathe through the pain, distantly aware of Geralt’s hands bracing him, Geralt’s voice telling him to be still and let it pass. Jaskier clings to that voice, those hands, like a lifeline, hating himself for taking such comfort from his _former_ friend, but unable to do otherwise.

Eventually, though, the pain does return to a more manageable level, and he can breathe again.

“Jaskier.”

Reluctantly he opens his eyes. “Hm?”

“I’m going to need to turn you onto your back, so that I can check your arm and shoulder. It’s going to hurt, but it’s necessary. All right?”

“If you’re going to put me on my back and hurt me, the least you can do is buy me dinner first,” Jaskier mumbles.

He hears the quiet huff of almost-laughter above him. “Unless you know of a tavern around here, that will have to wait ‘til we get back to civilization. Just… don’t move, all right? I’ve got you.”

That shouldn’t be as reassuring as it is, but he relaxes trustingly into Geralt’s hands anyway.

It turns out that “it’s going to hurt” is a massive understatement, but a few seconds of blinding agony and a choked scream later, Jaskier is laying on his back, letting the pain ease back from all-consuming to merely agonizing. He refuses to open his eyes, not wanting to see whatever look Geralt is giving him, but, well… impulse control has never been his strong point, and after only a few seconds he gives in to the urge and blinks his eyes open.

The sun is far too fucking bright, but Geralt has thoughtfully, and surprisingly, positioned himself so that his shadow falls over Jaskier’s face and shields him from the worst of it. He doesn’t look furious or manic anymore, thankfully, but those emotions have been replaced with a weary sort of sadness that slips right past Jaskier’s lowered defenses and tugs at his sympathies.

 _No. No, no, no, I_ refuse _to feel bad for him right now. I’m_ angry _with him,_ Jaskier reminds himself. _Just angry, not worried, not concerned. Dammit._

He watches, though, unable to tear his gaze away as Geralt catalogues his injuries. His touch is careful, so gentle it makes Jaskier want to cry. Why did it take this to earn him that kind of treatment? Why did he have to _almost fucking die_ before Geralt would treat him as though he cared?

Jaskier doesn’t cry, though, partly for the sake of what little pride he has left, but mostly because it would hurt too much.

Eventually Geralt sits back and meets Jaskier’s eyes. “It’s bad,” he says bluntly. “Broken leg, at least three broken or cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, broken collarbone, arm fractured in two places, and…” He trails off, jaw clenching and lips tightening, and Jaskier feels a jolt of icy fear go down his apparently-uninjured spine.

“What? Geralt, I do not like that look. That is a bad look. That is a look that says there is something even more wrong than the rest of everything that’s wrong right now. What is it?” Jaskier knows he’s babbling, but he can’t seem to help it.

“Your hand,” he cuts in. “Not just several broken fingers, but the impact crushed some of the small bones in the hand itself, and your wrist as well.”

The fear zinging up and down his spine settles in a cold lump in the pit of Jaskier’s stomach. “My hand,” he says flatly. “Meaning…”

“I can set most of the injuries and as long as you stay down and rest long enough, they’ll heal fine. I know enough to do that. But I don’t know… I’m not a healer, Jaskier. I’m not sure my skill is enough for that kind of injury. Not to heal it well enough that you’d be able to play again.”

Jaskier closes his eyes. Not only did his death wish fail to relieve him of the pain of losing the most important thing in his world, but the attempt itself may have robbed him of the second-most important thing in his world as well. _Well done, very well done,_ he thinks. _Stuck alive and without even your music as solace. Great._ Fresh tears well in his eyes and slide down his temples into his hair.

He hears Geralt get up and walk a few paces away. Maybe this display was finally pathetic enough that he’d changed his mind about sticking around and forcing Jaskier to survive all of this?

But no, he hears the rustling of Geralt digging through his pack, followed by silence.

“Yennefer...I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and if it were anything less, I wouldn’t be calling you like this. But it’s Jaskier. He’s very badly injured. He needs more help than I can give him on my own, and I have no way to transport him to a healer. I need – he needs you.” Geralt hesitates, then adds, “You saved him for me once, Yen. I’m asking you – begging you to do it again. Please.”

Listening to this, not only the words but the tone, Jaskier finds himself wondering if the pain has got him hallucinating or something. He can’t think of another reason why he’d be hearing Geralt calling the terrifying sorceress who had just spurned him mere hours before, to _beg_ for her help on Jaskier’s behalf. Apparently his pain-addled mind is just so desperate to feel like Geralt gives a fuck about him that it’s willing to play very vivid make-believe.

Opening his eyes, Jaskier watches as Geralt walks back and lowers himself to sit on the ground beside him again. Without waiting for him to ask, Geralt holds out a hand and shows him a small silver disk engraved with some kind of magical sigil. A smear of blood mars the design slightly. Not a hallucination, then. Either that or it’s a very detailed one, in which case he might as well play along and see what happens.

“She gave it to me, awhile back. For emergencies, she said. A drop of blood activates it and sends a message to her.” Geralt looks away, stares into the distance. No doubt brooding about that whole… thing.

“Does this really count, though?”

“What?”

“As an emergency.”

That certainly gets Geralt’s attention. He looks down at Jaskier, frowning. “Your music is your life. Yes, that’s a fucking emergency.”

 _No, no, absolutely not,_ Jaskier tells himself. _You are not to feel touched by that. Angry. Just angry._ It doesn’t help. A delicate curl of hope unfurls inside him, and somehow that manages to hurt even worse than all the broken fucking bones put together.

The whoosh of a portal opening startles them both, and for what seems like the dozenth time Jaskier’s involuntary movement makes the pain spike and forces a quiet, undignified sound from his throat. An instant later, the portal closes and Yennefer stalks over to stand beside him, across from Geralt.

Oh. Oh, good, this is exactly where he wanted to be. In the middle between the witcher he’s loved for decades and the sorceress who just broke said witcher’s heart, and far too badly injured to get out of the line of fire. Fantastic. Excellent. This day just keeps getting better.

“You,” she snaps, hand coming up to point at Geralt, who doesn’t move. “Not a word from you. I am here because your bard doesn’t deserve to suffer just because _you’re_ a fucking prick, but I am _not_ ready to speak to you again, so you are going to go over there,” as her hand shifts to point at a cluster of trees a few yards away, “and I am going to pretend you’re not here while I heal him. Clear?”

Geralt nods once and stands, gives Jaskier a lingering look he can’t quite interpret, then without speaking turns and walks away. Jaskier tries to watch him go, without meaning to, only realizing his mistake when he tries to turn his head and it shocks fresh pain from his collarbone and shoulder and he yelps, yet again. That’s getting extremely old.

When he looks back up at Yennefer, her violet eyes are blazing in a way that really should frighten him, but all he can summon at the moment is exhaustion.

“If you’re going to kill me, can you at least make it quick?” It’s a joke, sort of. It’s also sort of not one. Yennefer raises an eyebrow at that, as if she can hear the half-serious nature of the question, then her gaze skates down over his body.

It’s really something, he thinks, to watch a sorceress blanch like that.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” she murmurs as she kneels beside him. “I shouldn’t _need_ to kill you; this kind of damage should have killed you already.”

Before he can reply, her hand comes down on his forehead and sweet, painless unconsciousness draws him under.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys can have a little extra chapter today. As a treat. 
> 
> Yen came back and she brought the brain cell with her!

Geralt really should have seen the blow coming. He’s exhausted, physically and emotionally both, but that’s no excuse.

But he doesn’t, and apparently Yen’s done something magical to add extra power to her strike, because the punch snaps his head back against the tree trunk he’s been leaning against with enough force to make his vision go white for just an instant. He tastes blood as he scrambles to his feet, instinct driving him to defend himself against an attack.

Luckily, he reins in those instincts before he tries to hit Yen back, because she might actually have killed him if he had.

“You unspeakable, colossal, idiotic horse’s arse!” She’s standing close enough that he can feel the heat coming off of her, and her voice is loud enough to make his head ring.

Geralt can’t step back because of the tree behind him, so he settles for shaking his head and putting his hands up between them in a placating gesture. “What the fuck, Yen? What was that for?”

Clearly that was the wrong answer, for her gorgeous eyes narrow dangerously and she snarls at him. “Do you even know how he got that fucking hurt, or did you not bother to find out?”

“Of course I fucking know,” he snaps, “I’m the one who tracked him back to the ledge, then came down here and found him, and there’s not exactly a lot of ways one goes between the top of a cliff and the bottom of it with those kinds of injuries. So yes, I’m well aware that was trying to kill himself by flinging himself off the fucking path up there.”

Yen stares at him with cold disdain for a long moment. “You know that much, and you still try to sidestep the real issue. You still can’t acknowledge it. You fucking _coward.”_

“I’m –”

“He wasn’t just trying to kill himself, Geralt. He was trying to kill himself _because of you._ Because your feelings got hurt when I broke free of your idiotic manipulation-by-djinn, and you turned around and took it out on a man who has loved you for decades without ever asking a single fucking thing of you in return!”

“No… he… he asked things of me all the time.” It’s a stupid, minor point to fixate on and respond to, and he knows it, but he can’t seem to get his tongue around the words to respond to any of the rest of it.

She snorts and waves a hand dismissively. “Favors and small luxuries, little indulgences. That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. He spent twenty years — what would have been, if he’d been human, the prime years of his life — giving you everything he had. His time, his skills — his money, more often than you ever realized — his unending faith and forgiveness and support in every way he had to give. And he never expected you to be more than the emotionally stunted bastard he knew you were in return. All he asked was that you maybe, just once or twice, admit that he was your friend. But you couldn’t even give him that.”

Her words feel like knives flung at him, slicing past his defenses and leaving him bleeding, because he knows she’s right.

“And after all of that, he misjudged your mood _once_ and approached you too soon with the wrong tactic, and you turned around and _savaged_ him for it. We both know it was really yourself you were angry with, but you vented it on him instead of sucking it up and coping like a big boy. You threw all those years and all that love back in his fucking face so cruelly that he chose to end his own life rather than face the pain you inflicted, and it is purely through a miracle of draconic resilience — and some favorable wind conditions breaking his fall — that he survived long enough for you to find him.”

“I know.” Geralt keeps the words flat, refusing to meet her anger with his own, knowing that would only make things worse for both of them.

“Do you, though?” She sneers. “Really?”

He takes a slow, deep breath before replying, almost conversationally, “While you were picking through his memories to find out what happened today, did you happen to catch the one where he begged me to finish the job for him, when I first found him like this? Or the one where he said if he’d known that’s all it took to get a proper conversation out of me, he’d have thrown himself off a mountain years ago?”

Despite his best efforts, his voice takes on a harsh edge as he continues. “So yes, Yen, I do actually have some idea of the damage I’ve done. Would you like to paw through my memories from today as well, so you can taste for yourself the fucking terror that went through me when I followed his trail out onto that ledge and it stopped there? How about the sick horror of hearing one of the only friends I have ask me to kill him, like he really believed I’d do it?” He bares his teeth, anger breaking through his control. “Trust me, Yen, you don’t have to batter me with guilt. I can do that just fucking fine on my own.”

She rolls her eyes and steps back. “Yes, Geralt, I’m well aware of how skilled you are at weaponizing other people’s pain against yourself. And if that’s what you think this conversation is about, then perhaps I should take the bard with me to finish healing somewhere well away from you. Maybe that way he won’t undermine the work I’ve done by putting all his energy into fretting about your hurt feelings and reassuring you instead of resting and getting better.”

It’s not until she raises a hand, crackling with power as though to use it against him, that Geralt realizes that he’s moved toward her, a furious snarl on his lips. He stops, but doesn’t back down. “Jaskier stays with me. This is _not_ up for debate.”

Yen gives him a supremely unimpressed look. “You know, you’re right. It’s _not_ up for debate because you don’t actually get a say in this.” She bares her teeth at him in an expression that could only be mistaken for a smile by someone who’d never seen one before. “I’m a sorceress of Aretuza, witcher, and when you called for my help you made him my responsibility. Which means the decision regarding his care is mine as well. And if you really think you can _intimidate_ me into making the decision you want, you are sadly mistaken. Try that again and see what happens. I dare you.”

Geralt closes his eyes for a long moment, pushing back the almost feral rage that had flared to life in him at the thought of anyone taking Jaskier away. As it subsides, a sense of ragged desperation wells up in its place. “Yen…”

“Do you even know, Geralt, _why_ you want to keep him with you? Is it for his sake, or your own?”

“Both?” he offers, opening his eyes. “I… need to see him safe. To see for myself that he’s healing and he’s going to be all right. But I also intend to make up for my mistakes and my neglect as best I can, because –” it almost hurts to try to say it, but if he can’t then Yen is right, and Geralt should just let Jaskier go rather than selfishly fighting to keep him. Holding tightly to that thought, he pushes past the discomfort and forces the words out, “– because he deserves no less.”

Her violet eyes bore into him. His hands slowly close into fists and his shoulders tense – an understandable reaction, he thinks, given what happened the first time she got in his head – as he deliberately lowers his mental shields so that she can look into him, if she wants, to gauge the sincerity of his words. The raw openness of it feels viscerally _wrong_ , but… _it’s for Jaskier,_ he reminds himself. He can handle a moment of vulnerability, if it keeps Yen from taking Jaskier away from him.

At last she nods, seemingly satisfied. “Very well. I will leave him in your care, for now, on one condition.”

Warily, Geralt asks, “What’s that?”

“I want your word that you won’t ask for his forgiveness. Apologize to him, for fuck’s sake, make it up to him. You owe him that much. But don’t you _dare_ ask for his forgiveness, or I will make sure you can’t ask for anything else ever again.”

His brow furrows in confusion at both the words and the vehemence with which she spits them at him. She rolls her eyes and sighs as she goes on to explain. “Because if you ask, he will grant it to you no matter what it costs him in pride or hurt or anything else. He will prioritize your comfort and desire for forgiveness over his own pain, we both know it. So if you want to keep him, you will swear to me that you will not put him in a position to have to make that choice. Understood?”

Geralt nods. “I understand. I promise you, I will not ask his forgiveness.” He narrowly avoids adding ‘does that satisfy you?’, just to be an ass, but such a comment would likely result in her changing her mind and leaving with Jaskier, so. Best not to.

"Good." Yen nods to Jaskier, still asleep on the ground behind her. "It’s safe to move him now. He should sleep through ‘til tomorrow afternoon or evening; if he doesn’t wake by the following morning, it’ll mean something’s gone wrong. Call me if that happens. I'll portal you back to Hengfors now. Get a room, get him settled, and let him rest." She fixes Geralt with a hard stare. "He's not to leave the room for at least three days. Chain him to the damn bed if you have to. And do not, under any circumstances, allow him to try to play his lute during those first few days. The healing is not complete, and if he strains his hand too soon all the work I’ve just done will be for naught. See that he understands that."

Swords and gear and lute slung over his shoulder, Geralt picks Jaskier up as carefully as he can and waits for Yen to open the portal. But before he can step through, she stops him.

“Geralt,” she says, and he turns back toward her, cocking an eyebrow.

“Hm?”

“I forgive you for contacting me this once. Because the reason was genuinely worth it.” Her amethyst gaze sharpens. “But I will not be so forgiving a second time. Don’t do it again. When — or if — I’m ready, I’ll contact you. Clear?”

Geralt nods. “I wouldn’t have done it for anything less, Yen.”

She tilts her head and gives him a curious look. “You know his life wasn’t in danger. You have enough knowledge you could’ve taken care of this, and he would’ve survived. And you had to have known I would know that. So why risk my anger at you contacting me, when it wasn’t truly a life or death situation?”

“His life wasn’t at risk, no,” Geralt agrees. “But his music was. If I’d taken care of him on my own, he never would have played again. And Jaskier without his music wouldn’t be Jaskier anymore. That was worth any risk.”

Yen’s eyes soften a tiny bit. “Hm. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet. Go on, then.”

For a long moment, Geralt hesitates, drinking in the sight of her. He wants to remember her just like this: furious and powerful and proud, but with that hint of softness as she looks at him. It may be a very long time before they see each other again — if they ever do. Gods willing, this won’t be the last time, but who can say?

“Take care of yourself, Yen. When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready — you know how to find me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yen: this bard is so fucking annoying and I kinda hate him  
> Yen: ...but this will give me another excuse to yell at my ex, who's been an asshole to him  
> Yen: this is my bard now and I will fite you over him.


	9. Chapter 9

Jaskier wakes to a mattress beneath him, blankets on top of him, a pillow below his head, and a surprising lack of pain. For a few minutes he simply basks in that, enjoying the luxury of taking full breaths and being able to turn his head if he wants to. It’s enough to make him want to forgive the sorceress her various sniping comments and verbal jabs…

Until he remembers the events that led to his last awakening in agony, and her role in that, and despite everything a fierce protectiveness rises in him. Geralt –

_Oh._ He isn’t here. Jaskier opens his eyes to a dim room lit only by a half-burned candle and midday sun peeking around the edges of closed curtains, looks around, and finds himself alone. Which is odd, given that his last memory involves Yennefer standing over him, and shortly preceding that Geralt had made some rather pointed comments about not leaving Jaskier even though Jaskier had very much wanted him to.

Well, he decides, the mystery of his solitude will have to wait until he’s had a chance to get some water and — his stomach growls loudly — perhaps also something to eat. He sits up, casts about for his clothing, which it turns out is draped over a chair near the fireplace, and decides to dress and go in search of sustenance, only to discover that some thoughtful soul had already foreseen this need and provided for him. There’s a half loaf of bread and some cheese sitting on a tray on the bedside table, along with a small bowl cradling a good handful of berries, a pitcher of water and a clay cup, and… Jaskier picks up the other cup and sniffs at it. Wine — one of the sweet reds he likes, unwatered. That must’ve cost a few coin. How odd.

Water first. Wine after, with food. _See, Geralt? I do, in fact, have some sense of appropriate priorities sometimes._

Only the thought of Geralt makes him flinch, remembering their last couple of conversations, and… how can he face Geralt again, after that? He’s been so weak, and stupid, and even if maybe Geralt did actually care about him a bit, as his reaction to Jaskier’s injuries suggested, well. Even if he hadn’t really seen Jaskier as a burden before, he probably would now. And rightfully so.

_Nope, not thinking about that right now._ Jaskier drags his mind away from dwelling on things that will make him wish for death all over again, since there doesn’t seem to be a convenient mountaintop handy for him to jump from this time. To give himself something to do, he pours a glass of water and sips, looking around the room for any other clues as to how he got from the mountain to here.

At first his mind skips right over Geralt’s pack and silver sword propped in the corner of the room, so used to the sight that it doesn’t quite register for a few seconds.

When it does, he startles so badly he spills water all over himself and has to waste a few seconds drying off with a corner of the blanket before he can look again.

The silver sword is there, but not the steel — presumably, wherever Geralt went, he took that one — and his usual saddlebags aren’t there, but the smaller pack he’d taken up the mountain is. Which suggests two things: first, that they bypassed Roach in coming back here, or the saddlebags would be here too, and two, that Geralt _does_ intend to return — if only to collect his sword.

Jaskier isn’t sure if that thought pleases him or not. He’s still mulling it over when he goes to set his water cup back down and notices the scrap of paper that had been beneath it.

> _Jaskier -_   
>  _You’re in an inn in Hengfors. Yen portalled us there yesterday after healing you. I have gone to fetch Roach from where we left her, but I promise you I will return by nightfall. The room is paid for and the innkeeper instructed to give you whatever you may ask. Please, stay and rest. We have much to discuss - I look forward to speaking to you upon my return._   
>  _G_

“What the fuck?” he asks himself out loud. He reads the note over again and makes a mental note to do a silver test when Geralt gets back, because none of this is making sense. How do you get from “if life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands” to “I risked pissing off my terrifying ex to ask her to heal you, and before I left to go get my horse I made sure to leave you food and an expensive wine I know you like in case you woke before I got back” in a single day? Oh, and let’s not forget being considerate enough to leave a note reassuring him that he _is_ in fact coming back, and, perhaps most bizarre of all, promising to actually _talk_ when he returns.

It’s…it’s… it’s utterly baffling, is what it is. He can’t imagine why a doppler would bother taking care of him like this, but he can’t imagine why Geralt would, either. So. Silver test.

For lack of a better plan, Jaskier settles back onto the bed and enjoys the simple meal, marveling at the inclusion of the handful of berries. Sure, they’re in season, but it’s far enough north that even in season fresh berries come dear. This is… well, by Geralt’s standards, this is downright spoiling him.

The food is good, the wine even better. The only sour note is when, after eating, Jaskier thinks to perhaps while away the time waiting for Geralt’s return by playing a few songs, only to realize his lute is conspicuously absent from their belongings. He puzzles over that for a little bit, since on the one hand he did leave it atop the mountain before… all of that… but he also distinctly remembers seeing it on Geralt’s person when they met again at the foot of the cliff, so shouldn’t it be here with their other belongings?

Nothing to be done about it now, though, and...fuck it, he’s too tired to worry about it right now anyway. With a sigh, he simply curls up on the bed and dozes off to wait for his witcher to come back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see if any of the brain cell rubbed off on Geralt while Yen was yelling at him.

Geralt hadn’t realized just how heavily his fear that Jaskier would be gone when he returned had weighed on him, until he steps into their room at the inn and sees him asleep on the bed. His steady heartbeat is, in that moment, the most beautiful sound in the world. Relief so acute it’s nearly pain rushes through him at the sight, and after setting down the pile of gear brought up from Roach — including Jaskier’s lute, which he’d taken with him to make sure the bard didn’t try to play before Yen had said he should, as well as to incentivize him to stay and wait for Geralt's return — he has to take a moment to just breathe through it before he’s steady enough to approach and sit on the bed beside him.

“Mnuh?” The soft, sleepy sound of confusion Jaskier makes upon waking pulls a fond smile to Geralt’s lips. The bard rolls over and looks up at him blearily. “Geralt?”

“Hm.”

“Geralt! You’re back.” Jaskier starts to sit up. Geralt sets a hand on his shoulder and tries to gently press him back down, but gives up when Jaskier scowls at him. Sighing at the bard’s stubbornness, Geralt instead helps support him as he sits, propping pillows behind his back.

“I said I would be,” he murmurs as he works. “Did you not see the –” he breaks off as Jaskier holds the paper up between them, crumpled from where he’d been clutching it as he slept. “Yeah. That.”

There’s a slightly awkward pause, then they both start talking at once.

“So how are you –”

“Hey, do you have –”

Geralt cocks his head and gestures for Jaskier to continue. If the bard is actually asking him for something, he wants to know what so he can give it to him.

“Uh, I just… do you, do you happen to have my coin pouch somewhere?”

Geralt gives him an inquisitive look, but stands and goes over to the tangled pile of belongings and extracts Jaskier's coin pouch, bringing it back and settling on the edge of the bed again.

"Thanks," Jaskier murmurs distractedly, sitting up and poking through the contents of it as though looking for something specific.

Before Geralt can ask what he's doing, Jaskier pulls out a silver coin, reaches out, and presses it against the back of Geralt's hand. There's no sizzling, no smoke. The only response it gets is a raised eyebrow from the witcher.

"You know my medallion is silver, right?" is all he says, his other hand rising to brush fingertips over the silver wolf's head, but he sounds amused.

"Yes, but it's on the outside of your clothes and not against your skin right now," Jaskier says primly. "It seemed prudent to do my own independent verification."

The amusement fades from Geralt's face as Jaskier drops the coin back in the pouch and sets it on the bedside table, and there's a heaviness to his voice when he speaks again.

"Is it really so unthinkable that I would see to your care?"

Jaskier gives him a flat look. "If life could give me one blessing…" he quotes, letting it hang in the air between them.

Geralt flinches at that, looking away. Jaskier’s fingers twitch, but he clenches his fist in the blanket over his knee to stop himself from reaching out to comfort him. Surely Geralt wouldn’t want his reassurances. He never has before.

"That's fair," Geralt says quietly after a moment. "I suppose I can't blame you for your caution, after that."

The silence stretches uncomfortably between them, and for once Jaskier holds his tongue and does not fill it with chatter.

"Jaskier," Geralt says finally, looking back and meeting his eyes, "I… am sorry. For what I said. I didn't mean it, any of it. I was angry at Yen, and Borch, and destiny, but most of all at myself. And I vented that anger on you, the one person I had no cause to be angry with. It was wrong of me. I should not have done that." He goes quiet for a moment, jaw tight enough that a muscle in his throat jumps slightly. Jaskier has to tighten his grip on the blanket in his lap to stop himself from touching Geralt, taking his hands the way he longs to do.

"I was cruel to you in my anger," Geralt eventually continues, his deep voice hoarse with emotion. "So cruel that I drove you to try to take your own life. 'I'm sorry' doesn't even really begin to cover it, not in the face of such overwhelming pain. But I am. Sorry, that is."

"Geralt…"

"No." He shakes his head. "Please. Let me finish. I need to say this. Need you to hear it." The look he gives Jaskier is almost pleading, and as always the bard is damnably weak to anything Geralt asks of him, so Jaskier falls silent again. He nods his permission for Geralt to continue.

"I had a lot of time to think about it, today, while I was on the road. A person doesn't make that choice unless their pain is truly beyond bearing. Even as harsh as my words to you were yesterday, I don't think they would have driven you to such extremes were it not for the years of neglect and smaller cruelties leading up to that moment."

Jaskier makes a quiet, choked noise at that. Geralt's gaze sharpens, and he reaches for Jaskier's hands, though he hovers above them and doesn't touch.

"May I?"

And Jaskier finds that he can’t say no to the softness in the witcher’s voice when he asks, or the depth of concern in his eyes. Besides, he _wants_ Geralt’s touch. He always has. He’s wanted it for so long he doesn’t remember what it felt like _not_ to want it.

He doesn't trust his voice, so he simply nods, unclenching his fists and allowing Geralt to slide warm, calloused palms over his skin and grip his hands gently.

"You gave so much of yourself for so long," Geralt says, and all the air rushes out of Jaskier's lungs as he looks at his witcher and sees tears, actual, real, honest-to-gods tears shining in those golden eyes. "And you asked so little in return. And I refused, again and again, to give you even the smallest acknowledgment."

Jaskier watches, almost entranced, as Geralt closes his eyes for a moment and takes a slow, deep breath, steadying himself before he continues. He's never seen Geralt like this, wasn't even entirely sure he had this depth of emotion in him. Oh, Jaskier has known from that first day that the whole "witchers don't have feelings" bollocks was, well, bollocks, but Geralt had always kept his under such a tight leash that he seemed to be actively _trying_ to live up to the rumors. And now...to see his emotions written so clearly across his face is dizzying. Like cracking a code you’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand, or discovering sudden fluency in a language you’ve never heard before.

"Please understand that I'm not telling you this to try to win your sympathy. I just… you deserve to know that the way I treated you wasn't about you, not really."

"Telling me what?" Jaskier asks, keeping his voice low, the way he would when trying to coax a frightened animal.

Geralt opens his eyes again, ignoring the tear that breaks away and slides down his cheek. "Everyone in my life — everyone I have ever let myself care about — has wound up leaving me behind. I've never been… _good enough_ for anyone to want to keep. After a while, the only way I could deal with it was to keep everyone at arm's length. If I didn't let myself care, it wouldn't hurt when they left. Or it would hurt less, anyway — or at least I could pretend it did."

"That's why I kept pushing you away, every time you tried to get closer. I was… I was _afraid_ ," and there's something raw and almost angry underneath that word, so sharp it hurts to hear it, "that as soon as I dropped my guard, as soon as I let myself show that I cared about you, things would change, and you would leave. It would have destroyed me. I couldn't bring myself to risk that."

"But you do?" Jaskier can't help but ask. "Care?"

Geralt nods once, sharply. "I do. I always have." After a moment, he gives Jaskier a small, crooked smile. “Couldn’t help it, really. You’re...easy to care about.”

Jaskier lets out a breath he hadn't known he was holding in something between a sigh and a sob. It doesn't fix everything, but just hearing it said so simply and directly soothes an ache he's been nursing for twenty years. Slipping one hand free, he reaches up and places his palm against Geralt's face, swiping away the escaped tear with his thumb, breath catching in his throat when Geralt leans into his touch and closes his eyes.

"And then yesterday, I almost lost you, and I learned the hard way that keeping you away hadn't protected me for shit. It was even worse, actually, because the fear and pain was compounded by guilt and regret.” His gaze is fierce when he opens his eyes again and stares at Jaskier. “I never, ever want to hurt you like that again, not even accidentally. So please, Jaskier - I need you to tell me what I can do to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Whatever you need of me, you have only to ask.” He steels himself, then adds, “Even if it’s that you want me to leave, never come near you again. If that’s what you want.”

“If I asked you to, you’d go?” Cocking his head, Jaskier looks searchingly at Geralt, feeling that muscle in his jaw twitch again under Jaskier’s palm, seeking out the subtle tells he’s spent decades learning to interpret. “You’d leave and not come back?”

Hurt and misery fill his eyes, but Geralt doesn’t look away as he nods. “If that’s what you want. If that’s what you need.”

“But it’s not what _you_ want?”

Geralt shakes his head. “No. Hasn’t been for a long time now. Even when I said it was. But Jaskier, that’s not - what _I_ want isn’t what matters here.”

Jaskier gives him a faint, wistful smile. “Ah, but what if I _want_ what you want to matter?”

The hurt in Geralt’s eyes gives way to utter confusion, as though Jaskier has suddenly begun babbling nonsense. He seems at a loss for words.

Gently, slowly, Jaskier leans forward, guides Geralt forward with the hand against his jaw until their foreheads press together, noses just touching, so close he can feel Geralt’s breath ghosting across his mouth. He licks his lips nervously, heart fluttering rabbit-quick, and asks the single most terrifying question he’s ever spoken:

“What _do_ you want, then?”

The silence feels long enough for empires to rise and fall within its confines before Geralt answers.

“You,” he whispers. “I want you to stay, to let me stay. Want to be close to you, want to...to matter to you, and you to me, and both of us to know it. I don’t have a name for it, what this is. What you are to me. Words aren’t…” He pauses, a low growl of frustration rising in his throat. “Words are your gift, Jaskier, not mine. All I know is – everything is better when you’re with me. And worse when you’re gone.”

It’s so simple, and blunt, and slightly awkward — so absolutely, quintessentially _Geralt_ — that Jaskier nearly melts with it. Instead, he tips his chin up, closing the last few inches between them until his lips nearly brush Geralt’s, and asks, “May I?”

And just as Jaskier did earlier, Geralt answers with action rather than words, crossing the last breath of space between them and claiming the bard’s mouth with a kiss. Jaskier has half a second to notice that Geralt’s lips are much softer than he’d expected, and then he’s not thinking anything at all because oh _fuck_ , Geralt is kissing him the way Jaskier has wanted him to since the day they met, and there is no room for thought in his mind while this is happening.

Either a few seconds or half a century have passed by the time they break apart to try to relearn how to breathe. Geralt’s hand has come up to curl around the back of Jaskier’s neck, the lovely comforting weight keeping him grounded even as giddy, dizzying happiness threatens to carry him off. Jaskier grins and notes with faint astonishment the answering smile he gets from his witcher, real and true and utterly without the sardonic edge most of Geralt’s smiles have.

Still feeling a bit breathless, Jaskier leans in and steals another kiss, just to reassure himself that he can. And then while he’s there, he gives in to the temptation to nuzzle along the line of Geralt’s jaw. And it would be nearly criminal to stop there and _not_ press soft, warm kisses down the column of his throat, so Jaskier does that, too, delighting in the way Geralt tips his head back to allow it.

“It’s love, by the way,” Jaskier mumbles into the hollow of Geralt’s throat.

“Hm?” The familiar response rumbles underneath his lips and Jaskier almost laughs. He feels a bit lightheaded, which might be from the kissing, but he thinks it might be from happiness too. Maybe both.

“The word you were looking for. When you said you didn’t have a name for this. It’s love.”

Suddenly Geralt’s hands are cupping his face, drawing him back up to look each other full in the face again. It’s a bit like staring into the sun, Jaskier thinks, the way those molten gold eyes blaze with tenderness and yearning and need and something else, something more potent than the other three put together.

And then Geralt smiles again, pulls Jaskier in for another kiss, and simply says, “Yeah. You’re right. I think it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it guys! I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have, and that the soft ending was good enough to make up for all the angst. 
> 
> Thank you all so, so very much for the kudos and the delightful supportive comments. You've made this first foray back into writing and posting fic an absolute delight. I think I'm hooked. I've got 3 stories started and ideas for several more, so this definitely won't be my last contribution to this fandom.
> 
> ETA: I'm writing the sequel to this as we speak! Featuring: dragon!family, Jaskier in his actual dragon form for longer than 2 very painful minutes, and idiots in love trying to figure out how this whole relationships thing is supposed to work. I've created the series already even though the sequel isn't done, so you can subscribe to the series if you want to be notified when I finally do finish and post it.


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